Work of Grant Program Recipients

Joan Mitchell Center AIR Program

Rosalyn Bodycomb

Rosalyn Bodycomb’s installations stand as both a respite from and a space in which to contemplate the chaotic world around us. Images of place carefully observed – her work captures the deep intricacies of the natural world and beckons us to imagine our way in.

“The layering of history and culture in New Orleans brings to mind tectonic plates – where one senses the ever present danger of inevitable friction. I witnessed such an eruption on Mardi Gras morning while waiting for the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters to begin their ritual reclamation of the neighborhood.

Clusters of family, friends and complete strangers mingled in intermittent rain as gunfire exploded around us. Miraculously no one was hurt, but the trauma of the incident – the explosion of violence amidst that expression of the values we hold dear as a society – emerged as a metaphor for this complex city.”

Rosalyn’s installation re-tells her experience in New Orleans with photographs and paintings threaded together in a visual web connecting images to their location on a map. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, spent her childhood in Southern California, studied Printmaking (BFA) and Painting (MFA) in Texas, and currently lives and works in New York.